Google Reader stops offline support and recommends FeedDemon

Google today announced that it is shutting down offline support for Google Reader showing first signs of doing away with Google Gears. Google has also come up with changes overall to Google Reader and its privacy settings for sharing online.

Google Readers has stopped offline support and actually recommended Windows users to use Feed Demon. This is probably because either they find it Feed Demon has far too many loyalists who would want to migrate to an offline Google Reader. Also Google Reader might be concentrating on developing new ideas like Google Reader Play.

Google Reader also will have you choose if what you share with Google Reader can be made public or you would want it to be private.

Finally Google Reader has decided not to support older browsers which are IE6, Firefox 2.0 and even Chrome version 3.0 will not be supported.

I guess Google Reader is planning on newer and better options to keep it web centric and with new options for us to allow comments on shared items public and private I guess Google plans to make Reader into a dynamic social tool for sharing feeds and links very much like social networks. I guess this could mean life wont be easy for social bookmarking websites either.

What are your thoughts on where Google Reader will go? Do let me know through your comments.